Nostr Web Client

Most people don't realize that if the US government and its allies wanted to end #Tor they could coordinate to do so very easily.

Tor operates it's routing logic of circuits through a centralized mechanism of 9 directory servers. These servers dictate which nodes are allowed on the network.

The 9 servers are all within 14+ eyes countries (none are in a BRICS-affiliated country, I wonder why?), and who have all coordinated with each other in the past on drug busts and recently Tornado Cash and Samourai wallet devs.

Once the 9 directory servers are shutdown the Tor network would begin to crumble. Seems like a very odd killswitch that not many are aware about as to just how centralized Tor is in reality.

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Mike Dilger ☑️ 1y ago

According to the view of Mike Benz (who I've recently discovered), the US government was pro free speech until 2014. Free speech and things like Tor helped America to topple governments around the world, by subverting the views of their citizenry via free speech. I thought that was perfectly OK to do, as long as they were just convincing those citizens that democracy and human rights were worth fighting for (without dirty tricks) and those citizens then overthrew their oppressive government to get democracy and free speech.

But since 2014 things took a major turn against free speech. Crimea, through free speech, discovered the CIA coup and decided they didn't want to be involved in this new Western government, and did a counter-coup with the assistance of Russia which ended up in Russia annexing Crimea. The US was not pleased. They changed their policy going forward. Now speech couldn't be free, speech had to be aligned with US goals or else the US would find reasons to censor or block it. The election of Trump and Brexit just hardened their resolve.

So Tor is not quite so welcome anymore, and I wouldn't be suprised if it gets shut down exactly as you describe.

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Discussion

Luxas 1y ago

It would certainly take a major coordinated effort for all of the countries to fall in line in order to shutdown the directory servers, no question.

The likelihood of it ever happening? It's certainly plausible, but I'm still mixed on if realistically feasible. Though, that's exactly the point of my earlier note. The fact that it is even possible, should be alarming. And as you bring up, the West is now increasingly becoming anti-free-speech, often targeting activists. Which I acknowledge the correctness in nostr:npub16r0tl8a39hhcrapa03559xahsjqj4s0y6t2n5gpdk64v06jtgekqdkz5pl saying in most cases those arrested were due to bad OpSec. That's absolutely true.

However, as far as I know, the likes of fiatjaf couldn't one day decide which Nostr relays/nodes he likes/dislikes and effectively shut down any of them by having some centralized directory servers signal to "nostr browser" that they should no longer use those relays/nodes, unlike what the Tor Project can do.

So, there is an element of centralization that folks should be more aware of with Tor. What they do with this information is up to them. At no point have I said people should stop using Tor, simply by knowing said information.

AzHodl 1y ago

Revolution is certainly plausible as well.

Glowworm 1y ago

Okay, earlier I responded without this context. That's certainly a reasonable and fair criticism. That's the downside of centralization but its also what makes the Tor network somewhat stable. Suppose they were shutdown though, could the Tor Project just roll out an update to the Tor Browser with new hardcoded directory servers?